


Make a Wish

by deandratb



Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: Birthday, F/M, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 23:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Two parallel birthday universes for Penelope and Schneider.





	Make a Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bethanyactually](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethanyactually/gifts).



> Fic prompt: **birthday + love confession**

It's Penelope’s 40th birthday. Schneider is a joyful presence at the family party, of course, where he brought extra cupcakes even though he knew her _Mami_ would be baking.

Penelope’s been quietly freaking out all week about getting older and what this year means, so it doesn’t strike her as unusual that Schneider wanted to do something more. And she knows the kids will be happy to eat the extras.

After the singing and the presents, when the others are sitting around the living room fed and happy, he finds her in the kitchen and hands her a cupcake.

Penelope almost gives it back to him because she’s already had one slice of cake too many, but she glances down first.

Bright purple flowers circle the cupcake’s outer edge–and with blue frosting, Schneider has carefully piped ‘I love you’ in the middle.

Their first kiss tastes like sugar and hope, and is even sweeter than her birthday cake.

****

Schneider’s about to turn 43 and he won’t stop checking in with Penelope about the party she’s got planned for him. Elena has to come home for the day, he insists. He’d be happy to buy her ticket, whatever it takes. Alex has to clear his busy social calendar. It’s important.

A week’s worth of incessant questions at the dinner table and dozens of texts every day are as much as Penelope can handle, and finally she snaps. What’s so important about this birthday? It’s not even a milestone year!

It is for him, Schneider tells her, his hands restless in his lap. He was thirteen years old when he snuck a bottle of vodka from an unlocked liquor cabinet in the parlor, surprised that no one noticed. It’s been thirty years now since his first drink, and he’s ten years sober. He wants his whole family with him to celebrate that.

She asks if she should call his parents, maybe a cousin or two up in Canada, but Schneider shakes his head emphatically. All the family that matters, he tells her, is right here.

So Penelope plans the party, and she thinks about his words. She can’t get the image of him as a lonely teenager out of her head. She can’t stop thinking about why.

At five minutes to midnight before the day Schneider was born, she knocks on his door without warning. She tells him to open his card early, and they sit together silently on his couch while he reads it.

It thanks him for becoming a part of her family, and for making her life better. It lists some of her favorite things about him, and describes a few memories that she knows she’ll never forget. It makes Schneider laugh, and feel sentimental, and smile all the way to the end–where instead of her signature, Penelope has simply written ‘Look Up.’

He does, and she tells him she loves him with tears in her eyes.

The clock ticks over to midnight.

It’s the best birthday he’s ever had.


End file.
